Free Jazz Music

I LOVE this release, even more so than Karma and Jewels of Thought. Cecil McBee, Stanley Clarke, Billy Hart, and Norman Connors along with what sounds like an army of African percussionists lay down an amazing groove while while the horns take it in turns to go wild. There are some hornless sections that focus on the Balophone as sort of African marimba. The first time I heard Black Unity, I played it over and over again for three days straight. With the exception of what sounds like some sort of electronic keyboard fading in and out with a droning chord, it's all acoustic. Sanders is amazing. He's doing with his sax, imagination, and circular breathing what Hendrix did with an electric guitar with a battery of electronic gadgets.

If you are a fan of the Impulse label, especially the late 60's and early 70's then Black Unity is essential. The energy is incredible. The only thing I can compare it to in terms of Energy is Miles Davis "It's About That Time, March 7, 1970 Fillmore East".

Dig it!

The thought of Pharoah Sanders being a pharoah? Never accured to many. But he's a pharoah here. A king that can swing. The man with a plan.

This one track has one of the greatest rhythms I've ever heard, just a relentless incredible groove between all the drums percussion and McBee & Clarke's dual bass playing. Pharoah sits out for times, I am sure just listening in awe and wonder to the storm these men produced. I know I often do...

By late 1971, Pharoah Sanders was on a search for new sounds-- his flavor of spiritually infused free jazz had been widely explored over several albums in the previous couple years. Sanders began soaking his music in world rhythms-- eschewing the previous layer of free jazzish percussion in exchange for a more traditionally rooted percussion sound-- with drummers Norman Connors and Billy Hart along with percussionist Lawrence Killian, Sanders was able to develop an almost Afro-Latin vibe. This was further accentuated with the presence of two bassists-- a very young Stanley Clarke (on upright) and journeyman Cecil McBee. Clarke (and Connors) brought with him a deep sense of groove and a working knowledge of r&b and funk musics that helped push Sanders into a groove-oriented direction. The final piece, I suspect, in the evolution of his music was the departure of pianist Lonnie Liston Smith and his prelacement with Joe Bonner-- Smith's voice was far more distinctive, almost as much as Sanders, whereas Bonner provided a different pallete for the horns (in this case, Sanders and Carolos Garnett on tenor and Hannibal Marvin Peterson on trumpet) to work.

So the piece itself-- a 37 minute track-- opens with a dueling bass cadence over percussion before a funky piano riff and balphone drone takes over, setting the stage for something different. The theme is picked up by tenor (Garnett I suspect) and trumpet-- like many of Sanders' themes, there's an undercurrent of a Monk root to the riff. Eventually a brief collective improv gives way to individual solos supported by a neverending array of inventive percussion. The results are something.

As intriguing as it is though, "Black Unity" is lacking in some unknown quantity for me-- it's a great album, but something stops me from thinking of it in the same light I think of Sanders' best.

Of all of Pharoah's albums, this ranks among my favorites. The album consists of a single 37+ minute track of African-inspired percussive grooves and ace free-form jamming by Pharoah and his sidemen. Like much of his late 1960s-early 1970s work, the piece alternates between anarchistic cacaphony and sheer mellow bliss but seems to work as an organic whole a bit more effectively than his other excellent albums of the time. Note the bass-line from "The Creator Has a Master Plan" reprised toward the end of the piece -- nice touch. Definitely well-worth picking up and grooving to for fans of adventurous spiritual jazz, avant-garde jazz, acid jazz, and world music fans who want to explore fusions of world and jazz idioms. World fusion with teeth? Yeah. Dig it.

If you like this, make sure to check out the rest of Pharoah's label mates on Impulse! A shame that the conglomerate that owns the Impulse! label is no longer interested in reissuing the Impulse! back catalog on cd, and is threating to delete those Impulse! gems that are currently in print.

I am a huge sharrock fan, all of his other solo work(especially ask the ages)and the stuff he has done with pharoah and other groups is some of my favorite music, and I'm also not predjudiced against "free-jazz" as the critics label it(eric dolphy is my hero, and I love ornette coleman)but I just dont get this album, the songs seem like they are going to come together and start really jamming at one point or another in pretty much every track, but they just continue noodling around with no solid rythm or melody or solos or anything, the whole album just sounds like the five people noodling around aimlessly in the same key while they drummer just plays random rythms on the toms, maybe there is something really great or worthwhile on this album that I havent picked up on, but I just dont get the point of any of this music, plus its not enjoyable or energetic, get ask the ages instead is my advice.

this was my first sonny sharrock album and i was very pleasently surprised. yes, it's supposed to be a challenging avant garde record, but i found it very easy to listen to (great background music). sonny's wife (on the vocals) adds a very soothing quality to the sometimes chaotic music (and vice versa, she can sound pretty crazy at times). i would highly recommended this one, even for those who don't like avant garde and free jazz (and it's well packaged, the cd booklet is made of plastic not paper! great linear notes too)

A lot of free jazz, no matter what spiritual context the players were intending, dwells in the dark depths of human emotion, and the altissimo screams of saxophone and cacophonus piano pounding seem to burst forth with anguish and pain. Not so this album, which, while very challenging musically, appears to be an expression of pure love and joy-- even ectasy. "Black woman" is also incredibally soulful, something lost in a lot of "free music." Sharrock's playing casts him as the forefather of skronk-- but it's also surprising melodic. At one point during "portrait of linda in three colors, all black" i found myself moved to the point of vocalizing a loud "yeah!," with no one around to hear. a moving experience, and a must for fans of cecil taylor, ornette, shepp (especially, who's music seems to have a similar joyous tone to it) and heck, even modern noisemongers like sonic youth (who undoubtedly owe a debt to sonny.) Stunning and beautiful.

Sonny Sharrock has made some legendary records, like "Ask The Ages" and "Guitar" that feature his brilliant skronky playing. My favorite, though, is this record "Black Woman". It's like no wave soul music. Sharrock's playing is the seed for no wave and skronk (Thurston Moore, Arto Lindsay owe Sonny a debt of gratitude). On "Black Woman" Sonny's guitarwork is coupled with his wife Linda's sexy/scary/spiritual voice. At times, the songs are like eavesdropping on lover's getting their groove on. Milford Graves playes drums judiciously, but not tentatively.

This great record will freak you out the first time you play it, I promise. And isn't that the best recommendation of all? "Black Woman" is intimate, timeless, and above all, out there in adventureland waiting to be rediscovered.

A record so rare it's almost mythical finally gets the reissue treatment... and of course it took the Japanese to do it (why no American release! ). Anyway, originally released in 1969 to utter befuddlement from the jazz community, the 31 minutes of screaming, wailing and general vocal/guitar torture on this disc have found a safe, loving home within the "out-rock" community over the last 30 years, mostly amongst those with a weakness for some no-wave/skronk/industrio/punk action, if you know where I'm coming from. Produced by none other than Herbie Mann, honky flute-player extraordinaire (Sharrock was playing guitar in his band at the time for "money reasons"), "Black Woman" is - musically speaking - a real tough disc to pin down. Featuring a stellar line-up that includes free-jazz legends Milford Graves and Dave Burrell on drums and piano, respectively, and Linda Sharrock (Sonny's wife) on "vocals", the music is a curious mix of free-jazz thump, psychotic gospel vocalese, flamenco/calypso guitar stylings and a serious dose of proto-No Wave screech. Most of all, it works, and works well. The two best tracks, the title song and the scorching "Portrait of Linda in Three Colours, All Black", reach thunderous ascensions in sound, where all the player whollop and wail in unison to various ecstatic peaks, leaving one drained yet craving more. Talking of more, what about a reissue of Sharrock's similarly classic "Monkey Pockie Boo" LP from '70? Imagine, if you a will, a mix between Hendrix, Yoko Ono and Cecil Taylor, and that's somewhere near "Black Woman"'s universe. Such beautiful noise...

That Sharrock sound is worth pursuing anywhere. 'Guitar' and 'Ask The Ages' are great but 'Black Woman' is of a different magnitude. And mass. And electricity. An unfenced domestic at a gallop with Milford Graves on drums. Linda squealing over free-folk-surf-space music with chamber gashes. 'Bialero' is a memory that never existed. Volts, hearts, throats gushing about something inexpressably lost. It's the yard, the sunlit borders, the younger you. One of my favourite records.

Michael Blake is fairly well known as a New York tenor saxophonist, having played in a number of critically acclaimed groups such as John Lurie's Lounge Lizards and various spinoffs of the Jazz Composers' Collective, such as Medicine Wheel. I have heard him in a number of these groups, and I have to say that he has not made a strong impression on me. But based on a positive review, I took a chance on the present album, on which he leads a group of Danish musicians unknown on this side of the pond.

The result is frankly one of the best jazz albums I have heard in the past couple of years. The compositions are especially strong, and they alternate between more acoustic and electric vibes. The musicians emphasize feeling over virtuosity, and if you put it on in the background, you find yourself drawn away from whatever else you are doing to think, "What IS this?" Blake composed all the songs except for the Mingus song "Meditations on Integration" (given an alternative title here) and the extremely surprising Sun Ra tune "Languidity," which is remarkably beautiful.

I don't write reviews unless an album strikes me as surprisingly good or woefully bad, and this one fits well into the first category, and I can recommend it to anyone interested in modern jazz.

(Since the current Amazon page doesn't have the personnel, here they are:
Blake, saxes, bass clarinet, kalimba
Jonas Westergaard, bass
Kresten Osgood, drums
Soren Kjaergaard, keyboards
Teddy Kumpel, guitar on 3 cuts)

Michael Blake, noted Downtown saxophonist, founding member of the Jazz Composers Collective, here links up with unknown Europeans for maybe his strongest set yet.

Jazz by nature is unpredictable. Sometimes the most intentional superstar sessions fall flat, while in-the-nonce get-togethers such as this score big. Who knows why?

It's not that his other discs particularly lack something; indeed, Drift, Elevated, and Kingdom of Champa are among my favorites. But here something special is happening. I think it has to do with the casualness of the setting combined with no huge expectations. Thus, a bunch of no-name European youngsters manage to land on the perfect soundscape for emerging sax giant Blake.

There's a world-weariness sensibility all over this remarkable disc--one of my favorite moves in jazz. Just listen to the electrifying tho slow burn vibe of "Lemmy Caution," which kinda sets the stage for the noirish atmosphere that oozes most attractively from the majority of the tracks assayed most brilliantly in "A Messy Business," the mood of midnight blooziness perhaps never having been more spectacularly captured. When the boyz go out about halfway through this remarkable cut, they stamp the proceedings with an authority and weight of huge consequences, only to morph into a most attractive off-kilter loopiness. If they did nothing other than this slick move, they would've accomplished something of rather large significance.

But that's only the beginning. Once the lads rev up, they continue to amaze with "Cuban Sandwich," a very smart Afro-Caribbean number, followed up with "Feast," a North-African-ish number of massive authority, the type of thing Blake brilliantly majored in on Elevated, here casually trumped.

With "Languidity" we're in ur-ballad territory, and Blake's timbral authority combined with his 3 a.m. smoky-dreariness positions this track in some kind of noirish hall of fame. "Meditation (For a Pair of Wirecutters)" injects a Vegas-ish jaunty hopelessness into the mix, with, once again, musical bona-fides way beyond the call of duty. The heroic deconstruction that ensues about two-thirds through to the calliope wrap-up astounds.

"A Hole Is to Dig" (one supposes the wire-cutting perps from the previous track have been caught and incarcerated, and are attempting to tunnel their way out of the Big House, a la Nicholas Cage in Raising Arizona), brings a Dean Koontz-like wackiness circa Odd Thomas to the disc, solidified in its eldritch craziness by the a-referential zaniness of the closer, "Neil's Toy Train."

Music of mammoth presence and evocation. Not to be missed.

I don't need to review this because if you are even checking this out you know what a fu**ing classic this is. Get is now.

This is one of the greatest jazz recordings ever made. Thirty-five years after it was done, it still makes most jazz CDs look lame. It's all thanks to the late, great Jeanne Lee. Yes, Archie was the driving force, but the divine Jeanne's vocals from another universe put this session up on Olympian status. No serious listener of jazz should be without this monument

I don't need to review this because if you are even checking this out you know what a fu**ing classic this is. Get is now.

This is one of the greatest jazz recordings ever made. Thirty-five years after it was done, it still makes most jazz CDs look lame. It's all thanks to the late, great Jeanne Lee. Yes, Archie was the driving force, but the divine Jeanne's vocals from another universe put this session up on Olympian status. No serious listener of jazz should be without this monument

I don't need to review this because if you are even checking this out you know what a fu**ing classic this is. Get is now.

This is one of the greatest jazz recordings ever made. Thirty-five years after it was done, it still makes most jazz CDs look lame. It's all thanks to the late, great Jeanne Lee. Yes, Archie was the driving force, but the divine Jeanne's vocals from another universe put this session up on Olympian status. No serious listener of jazz should be without this monument